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Orchestra based in Birmingham, England

The City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra (CBSO) is a British orchestra based in Birmingham, England. It is the resident orchestra at Symphony Hall, Birmingham in Birmingham, which has been its principal performance venue since 1991. Its administrative and rehearsal base is at the nearby CBSO Centre, where it also presents chamber concerts by members of the orchestra and guest performers. Each year, the CBSO performs more than 150 concerts in Birmingham, the UK and around the world. With a far reaching community programme and a family of choruses and youth ensembles, it is involved in every aspect of music making in the Midlands. At its centre is a team of 90 professional musicians, and over a 100 year tradition of making music, in the heart of Birmingham. The CBSO has four choirs – the CBSO Chorus, Youth Chorus, Children's Chorus and SO Vocal (our un auditioned community choir), conducted by Lucy Hollins. The current chief conductor and artistic adviser of the CBSO is Kazuki Yamada, effective April 2023.

The earliest orchestral concerts known to have taken place in Birmingham were those organized by Barnabas Gunn at the Moor Street Theatre in 1740, and more than 20 separate orchestras are recorded as having existed in the city between that date and the foundation of what is now the CBSO in 1920. These orchestras often owed their origins to Birmingham's internationally significant tradition of choral music, that give birth to works such as Mendelsohn's Elijah and Elgar's Dream of Gerontius, and in 1834 saw the building Birmingham Town Hall, one of Europe's earliest large scale concert halls. Birmingham's most notable early orchestra was the Birmingham Festival Orchestra, which formed as a group of 25 musicians in 1768 but by 1834 had grown into an orchestra of 147. Under Michael Costa and Hans Richter between 1849 and 1909 it included some of the leading instrumentalists of its day from across Britain and Europe, The CBO's first concert was given under Matthews' baton as part of the Sunday series at the Theatre Royal on 5 September 1920, with the first piece of music performed being Granville Bantock's Saul. After two months of preparing the orchestra with the popular concerts, the inaugural concert of the Symphony Concerts series was given at the Town Hall on 10 November 1920, with Edward Elgar conducting a concert of his own works, including his Cello Concerto with Felix Salmond as the soloist. The first season continued with a remarkable series of programmes, including Ralph Vaughan Williams conducting his own London Symphony, Hamilton Harty conducting Berlioz's Symphonie fantastique, Adrian Boult conducting Rachmaninov's Second Symphony, Landon Ronald conducting Brahms' Second Symphony and Jean Sibelius conducting his own Third Symphony. Two features that would become longstanding traditions for the orchestra were also established during this first year: performances of then recent works by Holst, Vaughan Williams and Bax saw a strong representation of new music in the orchestra's programmes; and from February 1921 the orchestra's commitment to musical education was underlined with a series of concerts for city schoolchildren held in the Town Hall on Saturday afternoons. Matthews had originally been appointed to be conductor with a fee of £450 for 30 concerts, but had persuaded the committee to give him instead the combined role of conductor, secretary and manager for a fee of £1,000 per year. He had only limited experience in any of these roles, however, and developed a difficult relationship with the politicians and businessmen who made up the CBO committee. His plan to supplement the playing strength of the orchestra with members of the Birmingham City Police band almost caused the orchestra to strike before it had even played a concert, and resulted in questions being asked in the House of Commons in December 1920. Matthews' conducting and his management were both poorly reviewed by Birmingham based critics, though reviews from outside the city were more positive, with The Daily Telegraph being highly complimentary and the Manchester Guardian concluding "Manchester may well envy Birmingham its municipal music". Matthews' Symphony Series programmes were highly ambitious and enterprising, and he was able to claim that "the amount subscribed for Symphony Concerts constituted a record for any similar series of concerts in this city" but the Sunday concerts were loss making, with the expensive seats often unsold. In 1922 Matthews was relieved of any involvement in the financial administration of the orchestra, popular concerts were increasingly moved to suburban and out of town venues, and development and marketing plans were drawn up to stem a deficit which by May 1923 grown to £3,000. In July the orchestra and Matthews both engaged solicitors and in October Matthews was informed his contract was to be terminated, His final CBO concert was on 30 March 1924, and the relationship dissolved in acrimonious and expensive litigation.

The CBO committee had two candidates in mind to replace Matthews: Eugene Goossens and Adrian Boult. For a while the committee explored the possibility of appointing both as joint conductors, but were convinced by Ernest de Sélincourt that this idea was unworkable. Boult had recently replaced Henry Wood as the conductor of the Birmingham Festival Choral Society – possibly calculating that there might shortly be a vacancy with the City Orchestra – and in March 1924 he was announced in the press as the CBO's new Director and Conductor. At the age of 35 he already had a substantial international musical reputation, having studied at the Leipzig Conservatory under Arthur Nikisch, conducted the world premier of Holst's The Planets at the age of 25, and worked for a period as chief conductor of Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes. The urbane, Oxford educated Boult was also comfortable dealing with influential local citizens, ensuring the orchestra retained the financial support it needed to continue. His tenure at the CBO would mark the start of a "golden period" for the orchestra that would see it rise to national prominence, outshining the struggling London orchestras and establishing Boult himself as a major figure of British musical life. Boult brought a wider vision for the orchestra's future, building on Matthews' foundations but expanding beyond them. Some of the leading conductors in Europe were brought in to guest conduct, including Bruno Walter, Pierre Monteux, Ernest Ansermet and Ernő Dohnányi. Boult introduced lunchtime concerts at the Town Hall, inaugurated lectures about forthcoming music on the Thursdays before symphony concerts, invited students from the University of Birmingham to attend open rehearsals, and introduced free concerts for children during school hours. The orchestra made its first commercial recording in 1925. A more unusual experiment took place later the same year, when Saint Saëns' Second Piano Concerto was performed at the Town Hall with Harold Bauer as soloist, but with his part played not with him present but as a pre recorded piano roll. A particular concern of Boult's was to reduce the effect of the summer break when, as with London's Queen's Hall Orchestra and Manchester's Hallé Orchestra, the CBO's musicians spent the summer working at seaside resorts and often picked up bad habits freelancing for pier orchestras. The committee felt unable at that time to meet Boult's desire to offer players permanent year round contracts, but Boult tried to lessen the length of the break by initiating performances at public schools throughout the Midlands. and building up the orchestra's diary of out of town concerts. The immediate impact of Boult's arrival was conveyed by the Birmingham Post reviewing his first season: "The strongest impression is of a very great gain in note accuracy, a much improved ensemble, and a high standard of playing from the string group. The advance made within a single season is so considerable as to be remarkable." The orchestra also moved into more adventurous repertoire, for example performing Bartók's Dance Suite less than a year after its composition, while the composer was little known in England. The CBO's performance of Mahler's Fourth Symphony in 1926 was only the third performance of any Mahler symphony given in Britain, and that of Das Lied von der Erde was only the second time it had been performed in England. Both were followed shortly afterwards by performances by orchestras in London and marked the start of the gradual increase in interest in Mahler's work in Britain. By 1926, the orchestra's finances had improved, helped by the City Council's decision in 1924 to allow Birmingham Town Hall to be used rent free for the Symphony concerts and in 1925 to double the CBO's grant to £2,500 annually. Less positive was the collapse in October 1925 of the Town Hall's ceiling, leading the orchestra to move its concerts temporarily to Central Hall on Corporation Street. Expenditure on repairing the Town Hall put back prospects of the new concert hall that Boult had been promised, and the reconfiguration of the hall from one gallery to two – engineered by London based architect Charles Allom without consulting any local musicians – created acoustic problems that would dog the orchestra until its move to Symphony Hall six decades later: the Birmingham Post wrote that "everything sounded strange" and complained of acoustic dead spots in the ground floor and lower gallery. One aspect of Boult's time at the CBO was the development of an important relationship with the recently established BBC. The CBO's concert at Birmingham Town Hall on 7 October 1924 was the first orchestral concert anywhere in the world to be transmitted as an outside broadcast, and in 1924 and early 1925 the CBO was used to perform four "International Symphony Concerts" at Covent Garden in London, supplementing the BBC's own "Wireless Players" to form the "Wireless Symphony Orchestra", the forerunner of the BBC Symphony Orchestra. In 1927 the relationship became more problematic as the BBC stopped broadcasting CBO concerts as a result of national dispute with the Musicians Union, and in 1928 upgraded the orchestra at its Birmingham station, luring sixteen of the CBO's most important players away with full time contracts. In May 1929 the BBC went a stage further, when the retirement of its Music Director Percy Pitt saw Boult offered the role as his replacement. Boult was happy in Birmingham and had planned to stay at least another ten years, but was encouraged to accept the BBC role by Henry Wood. He resisted John Reith's pressure to take up the BBC post immediately and agreed instead to perform a further final season with the CBO. He later said he regretted leaving Birmingham, which provided the only time in his career he was able to fully control his own programmes.

Four conductors were shortlisted to succeed Boult and were given trial concerts – Leslie Heward, Stanley Chapple, Julius Harrison and Basil Cameron – but Boult later described how "Heward very easily won the palm". Heward had studied conducting under Boult at the Royal College of Music, where Hubert Parry had described him as "the kind of phenomenon that appears once in a generation". He came to Birmingham from a highly successful period as music director of the South African Broadcasting Corporation and Conductor of the Cape Town Orchestra, where he had raised the standards of the orchestra's playing to the extent that they were invited to England perform at the Empire Exhibition in 1925. Despite this, his appointment was a gamble for the CBO committee, as he was still largely unknown to English audiences. Heward soon gained the respect of the orchestra's players and the Birmingham audience for his formidable musicianship. His score reading ability was exceptional and he was able to instantly diagnose problems in rehearsal – the CBO's flautist remarked that he had "never known a conductor who was so much respected by his players." He was also known for his honesty and integrity, sometimes restarting a public performance he felt to be substandard halfway through, saying "I'm sorry, we can do better than that." His programming in Birmingham was bold: 28 of the 41 pieces played in his first season were Birmingham premieres, and the orchestra became particularly known for its interpretations of Dvorak, Sibelius and modern British composers. The orchestra under Heward also began to attract front rank soloists: Arthur de Greef and Nikolai Orlov performed in 1931; Artur Schnabel played Beethoven's Fourth Piano Concerto in 1933; Ernst Wolff, Arthur Catterall, Egon Petri, Frederic Lamond performed in 1934; Adolf Busch and Solomon in 1936; and in 1938 Béla Bartók played one of his own Piano Concertos. Assistant conductor Joseph Lewis followed Boult to the BBC Symphony Orchestra in 1931. His eventual replacement, Harold Gray, had started his 55 year long association with the orchestra as Boult's secretary and musical amanuensis in 1924, and had first conducted the orchestra in 1930 in Sutton Coldfield where he was organist at parish church. Heward was reluctant to talk to audiences and didn't enjoy performing for schoolchildren so Gray took over children's concerts in 1931 and was appointed Deputy Conductor in 1932. The Symphony concerts under Heward drew excellent attendances, but audiences continued to drop for concerts of popular classics as competition from radio and the cinema for leisure time activity increased. Relief from the resulting financial pressure came through a series of arrangements with the BBC. In 1930 the broadcaster agreed to reduce its Birmingham orchestra to an octet – with the redundant musicians being auditioned by the CBO – in return for the CBO performing 13 studio concerts each season: an important step towards permanent year round contracts for the CBO's players. In 1934 Percy Edgar and Victor Hely Hutchinson agreed to establish the BBC Midland Orchestra playing 2–3 concerts a week, with Heward as conductor and 35 of its musicians shared with the CBO on 12 month contracts. The stability this brought meant that Heward could build on the achievements of the previous 15 years and by the late 1930s the CBO was playing to a standard comparable to the orchestras of major cities of continental Europe. By 1939, the CBO's finances were looking sound and its future bright. The outbreak of World War II, however, saw the BBC disband its Midland Orchestra and lay off its musicians, many of whom were also leading players with the CBO. Birmingham Town Hall was commandeered for the war effort and the CBO cancelled all of its engagements, giving Heward six months notice of termination. Although the orchestra started performing again at the Birmingham and Midland Institute in October as the "City of Birmingham (Emergency) Orchestra" and was able to reinstate Heward on a series of temporary contracts,it had lost many of its prewar players, and would be composed only of part time musicians for much of the war. Compounding the difficulties was Heward's illness. He had contracted tuberculosis during his period in South Africa and was already missing concerts with illness by 1934. Aggravated by overwork, smoking and heavy drinking, his condition deteriorated and he spent six months in a sanatorium from September 1939 to May 1940. He gave his first performance for over a year on 20 October 1940, but regularly had to cancel engagements after that, with most of the CBO's concerts during the period being conducted by Victor Hely Hutchinson. On Boxing Day 1942 Heward was offered the post of Conductor of the Hallé Orchestra in Manchester, tendering his resignation with effect from the end of the season, but he did not live to see out his contract, dying at his Edgbaston home in May 1943.

In early 1960 the CBSO committee were still planning for Boult's deputy Meredith Davies to succeed him as Principal Conductor, but Davies had formed an increasingly close working relationship with Benjamin Britten after taking over conducting duties at a CBSO concert of Britten's works, and in March 1960 he left the orchestra to work with Britten's English Opera Group. Two months later Hugo Rignold was announced as the CBSO's new Principal Conductor. Rignold had established his reputation as one of the country's leading conductors during six years at the Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, subsequently serving as music director of the Royal Ballet and guest conducting with major orchestras across Britain, Europe and America. He had conducted the CBSO numerous times since 1955 and was noted for his professionalism and technical expertise. He had particular strengths as an orchestra trainer and under him consistent signs of the orchestra's potential began to emerge for the first time since the war. Rattle was named music director of the CBSO in 1990. That same year, the post of Radcliffe Composer in Association was created, with Mark Anthony Turnage filling the role. In 1995, Judith Weir became Fairbairn Composer in Association, followed in 2001 by Julian Anderson. Following Rattle's departure, Sakari Oramo became chief conductor in 1998, and music director in 1999. His CBSO work included the Floof! festival of contemporary music. He also championed the music of John Foulds in concerts and recordings. In 2001, the players rejected a contract that would have stopped extra payments for broadcasts and recordings, in the context of financial crisis at the CBSO. In addition, other controversy arose from the CBSO's demands from the Arts Council for a greater share of the council's stabilisation fund, because of its reputation compared to other British orchestras. In 2008, Oramo stood down as music director and took the title of principal guest conductor for the 2008–2009 season. In October 2007, the CBSO named Andris Nelsons as its next music director, effective with the 2008–2009 season. Nelsons' initial contract was for 3 years. The appointment was unusual in that Nelsons had not conducted the CBSO publicly prior to his appointment, but only in a private concert and in a recording session. In July 2009, the orchestra extended Nelsons' contract for another 3 years, through the 2013–2014 season. In August 2012, the CBSO announced the further extension of Nelsons' contract formally through the 2014–2015 season, and then for subsequent seasons on the basis of an annual rolling renewal. In October 2013, the CBSO announced the conclusion of Nelsons' tenure as music director after the conclusion of the 2014–2015 season. In July 2015, Mirga Gražinytė Tyla first guest conducted the CBSO. In February 2016, the CBSO named her as its next music director, effective September 2016, with an initial contract of 3 years. She was the first female conductor to be named music director of the CBSO and conducted her first concert as CBSO music director on 26 August 2016. She concluded her CBSO tenure at the close of the 2021–2022 season, and took the title of principal guest conductor for the 2022–2023 season. Kazuki Yamada first guest conducted the CBSO in 2012. In May 2018, the CBSO announced the appointment of Yamada as its next principal guest conductor, effective with the 2018–2019 season. In January 2021, the CBSO announced the extension of Yamada's contract as principal guest conductor with CBSO until 2023. In September 2021, the CBSO announced the appointment of Yamada as its next chief conductor and artistic advisor, effective 1 April 2023, with an initial contract of 4.5 years. In May 2024, the CBSO elevated Yamada's title to music director. The CBSO's current Associate Conductor is Michael Seal. In February 2022, the CBSO announced the appointment of a cohort of six new Assistant Conductors – Bertie Baigent, Olivia Clarke, Otis Enokido Lineham, Jack Lovell Huckle, Charlotte Politi and Konstantinos Terzakis. The CBSO's current chief executive is Emma Stenning, as of April 2023, in succession to Stephen Maddock. The CBSO has recorded extensively for labels such as EMI Classics, Warner Classics, and Orfeo. The orchestra has also released recordings under its own self produced label.